Etruscans

[philjennings at juno.com]

I divide the claims in my former email on this topic into attested data,
hypotheses, and plausibilities.

Under attested data, I place everything from the Annals of Mursilis II,
minus the absolute identification of the Ahhiyawa with the Achaeans,
Millawanda with Miletos, and Apasas with Ephesus (implicit).  Also
included as attested data are the occupation of Lemnos by Pelasgians and
Tyrsennoi, with other Tyrsennoi settlements as noted by Herodotus and in
Etruria.

Hittite limitations at sea are also attested, as was Achaean dominance of
the Aegean and the Ionian seas during this period.

The Mycenaean trade route up the Adriatic may fall slightly short of the
best standards of attested data, but Baltic amber got to Greece somehow,
and this route is shown in McEverdy.

The identification of Uhhazitis's island retreat with Lemnos is sheer
hypothesis.  Islands closer to Arzawa are possible, but perhaps the
Achaeans already saw them as their own property, plus there were dangers
to proximity.  The extrapolation of 200,000 displaced persons captured by
Mursilis II during the Arzawa campaign is an hypothesis.  A Pelasgian
reworking of the proto-Etruscan name, prior to passing that reworked name
on to other languages, is an hypothesis.  The ta-prefix part of that
hypothesis is an absolute stab in the dark.  An implicit hypothesis is
that the first proto-Etruscans in Italy were at home on the eastward,
Adriatic side, and only gradually drew westward into classical Etruria.
Classic Etruria is beyond the point where the Mycenaeans could have done
much to help or benefit from the planting of a new nation, but that
depends on the status of the Italian island polities already in evidence
to the south; were they allies, colonies, rivals, or what?  There may
also
have been shorter-lived proto-Etruscan plantings on the north and east
shores of the Adriatic.

A continuation of the Arzawa-Hittite struggle by other means, once the
troops of Arzawa were repeatedly defeated, is a plausibility.  The
movement of escapees=refugees to Uhhazitis's island retreat is a
plausibility.  The overloading of the island retreat is a plausibility.
The deference to Mycenaean preferences in the location of further
settlements is a plausibility.  The superiority of refugees with a
national consciousness and traditions, to natives unfamiliar with these
ideas, is a plausibility.  The date-range of 1330-1180bce as optimal for
a
Tyrrhenian migration is a plausibility.  The stacking of so many
plausibilities on top of each other, reduces the chance of them all being
true to something less than a plausibility, and hence an hypothesis.

---

As if I haven't done enough along these lines: I wonder if the displacees
of Sudura, mentioned in the Annals, were from the city later known as
Sardis?  They may also have been the Sherdana associated with the Tursha
in their attack on Egypt.  If the Hittites under Mursilis II claimed
Sardis as a satellite polity, this would be intolerable to the Arzawans.
Look how close Sardis is to Ephesus, and how far from Hattusas.  It
becomes obvious that Mursilis II's program of "imperial recovery" is an
aggressive war of imperial expansion.  Sadly, I'm not in a position to
associate Attarimma with any entry from the Egyptian enemies list, nor to
identify the "cities" of Hu(wa)rsanassa and Attarimma with known later
classical sites.

However, the Sudura / Sardis / Sherdana hypothesis has a consequence in
case many Sherdana did go as some speculate to settle in Sardinia,
bringing high eastern technology, warlike defensive construction, and a
non-IE language.  If Sardinia was near enough for the Sudura to go there,
classical west-coast Etruria wouldn't have been too far for the
Tyrsennoi, and I need not assume a timid east-coast proto-Etruria.